“Gangrene has set in; Mikla’s whole leg has gone bad.” Charlie removed his glasses and closed his eyes. “There is no way this wolf can survive. Even I cannot believe in this … this—”
“Magic?” Niles said, cutting off Ellenshaw’s logical conclusion.
“Okay, I’m glad you said and I didn’t. I would have—”
That was as far as Ellenshaw got in his explanation when Mikla suddenly strained at the offending restraining ropes. The beast thrashed and twisted, threatening to rip the thick ropes holding it down. The mouth opened and spittle flew and then the loudest howl any human had ever heard shattered the interior of the temple.
Compton and the men from Patinas saw them first. The adult Golia were everywhere. Whatever strange mission the adults had been on was clearly not a priority for them today as they were all streaming down the steep walls of the temple, coming from someplace only the Golia knew. They came down headfirst, sideways, and backward, each holding on to the rough-hewn walls of the temple. They were all coming to Mikla’s aid. The four men of Patinas knew it was time to leave. They sprinted from the center of the temple, leaving a startled Charlie and Niles to watch their retreating forms. Compton looked from the running men to the flailing body of Mikla thrashing on the stone table.
“I think we better follow suit and get the hell out of here,” Niles said as he grabbed Ellenshaw by the arm and started pulling him away from the injured wolf. Just as Charlie nodded that he thought Niles’s assessment of the situation was spot-on, they both turned and saw Stanus standing at the bottom of the stone steps leading to the outside. The Golia was standing with one arm raised and holding the wall for support. The claws had actually dug into the stone. The animal was breathing hard and staring at the two Americans.
“You know what, Mr. Director? I don’t think he looks all that happy and I suspect that the captain is no longer a passenger aboard that particular thrill ride.”
Niles couldn’t answer as he felt the other adult Golia start to settle onto the floor of the expansive temple complex. There were at least a thousand of the amazing wolves. The males ranged in weight from a few hundred pounds to close to a thousand as they walked on all fours toward the dais where Mikla was thrashing horribly. One by one the Golia took up station in a circle around the injured Mikla. For the moment Niles and Charlie were ignored, but Compton figured that would last only as long as Stanus allowed it to. Still, the alpha male watched. Its breathing was calming somewhat but the animal was still clearly angry at having been host to a stranger.
Suddenly Stanus strode with a purpose toward Niles and Ellenshaw. The beast came close to a large stone block and angrily swiped at the ten-by-ten slab. As they watched in amazement only feet from their own deaths, Compton and Ellenshaw saw a large chunk of the stone fly off and strike the wall. With a single blow the angry leader of the wolf pack had shattered solid stone. Compton was near to closing his eyes when Mikla let out a howl that sent shivers down the director’s spine. It even made him forget the immediate threat of Stanus and turn to look at Mikla. At the same moment Stanus stopped and stared as the other adult Golia, covered in mud and filth, started to repeat Mikla’s painful howl.
As they watched, the ankle of the great wolf popped and straightened. Mikla screamed in absolute pain. The center rope restraining him snapped with an audible twang as the two halves separated. The Golia thrashed and growled. Stanus raised his muzzle to the ceiling and let loose a blood-curdling howl that made Charlie cover his ears. At the same moment the other adult Golia and then the offspring high above started howling. The noise was deafening as the healing of Mikla continued. Compton could only wonder at what the old woman was enduring for the sake of the animal she had sent to protect Anya.
Before anything could be figured out by the two men from the Event Group, Mikla screamed in utter pain. The body stiffened and the animal rolled onto its back and the legs went straight into the air. The large mouth opened and they saw the amazing whiteness of the teeth as a howl of pain came through with not a sound. Then Mikla’s body went limp. Charlie winced as he realized the pain of the spell of healing had been just too much for Mikla, and Ellenshaw was starting to suspect that things didn’t go well inside for Madam Korvesky.
Stanus stood before the two men with its yellow eyes bearing down upon them.
With Niles and Charlie watching in stunned and terrified silence, Mikla suddenly tore free of the remaining ropes that held him down. He slashed with his claws and with his teeth until the ropes were in tatters around the dais. The giant wolf sprang from the table and landed on all fours. The rear right ankle looked as if it had never been injured. Charlie felt his will to advance science was at stake as he took a tentative step toward Mikla as it stood watching the men and shaking its head to clear it of the painkillers that had been given it by Dr. Gilliam. In response to Ellenshaw’s bravery, Mikla roared in anger and then stood on two legs. The right hand bunched into a fist and then it came down on the stone dais. The enormous block of stone cracked but stayed intact.
Stanus moved before either man could realize what was happening. The giant beast jumped over Niles and Charlie and stood between them and the newly revived Mikla. Then without another sound all the other Golia vanished up the walls. Mikla stayed behind as did Stanus. Then even Mikla, with a last look at the stone hut where the surgery was taking place, sprang away into the flickering light of the torches. Stanus stayed.
“Uh oh,” Ellenshaw said as Stanus looked directly at them. The claws of both hands were clicking together at the animal’s sides as it took a malice-filled step toward the two men.
“Stanus, that’s enough!”
The voice of Anya coming from behind froze the beast as it slowly turned its head to the woman who stopped its actions. Niles and Charlie could clearly see that Stanus was growing very tired of listening to orders. As the two men looked out the corners of their eyes they saw Anya standing in the doorway with Carl Everett beside her. He had an arm around the Gypsy princess and looked weaker than anyone could ever recall seeing him. He was haggard but his eyes still held the deep blue and they could see that he had survived the spell.
“Go with the babies, Stanus. Go!” Anya shouted angrily. The night and morning were taking a toll on her.
Stanus turned and walked with purpose toward Anya and Everett. Charlie took a step forward but Niles held him back. Whatever was going to happen to Anya and Carl there wasn’t anything either Niles or Ellenshaw could do about it. The beast tossed Anya aside and then snatched Everett off the floor until the large Navy man’s feet were dangling three feet off the stone.
“Stanus, no!” Anya shouted and as she did the ears of the beast lay down as it started to raise its right hand into the air for a decisive swipe into Everett’s tired and haggard face. Anya tried to seize the right leg of Stanus to get its attention away from Carl, but the beast ignored her.
“Stanus, come,” came a weak voice from the room. “Stanus, come to me.”
The Golia froze. The hand was still in the air and the sharpened claws were only a foot away from ending the captain’s life when the ears came up.
Niles felt he understood what was happening. The animal had been afraid that Madam Korvesky had died and that was why it was in a killing mood. That coupled with the betrayal felt by Stanus by Carl’s traveling with it, had made the animal barely controllable.
Stanus let Everett slide through its fingers as it turned and ran into the hut. Moments later the Golia stepped from the enclosure where Madam Korvesky was lying in a drug-induced weariness and looked at the two men and Anya. Everett was still on the ground looking up at the wolf he had been running within only recently. The beast suddenly reached down and snatched Everett off the floor and then brought him to its face. The beast sniffed, once, twice, and then a third time. It allowed Carl to slide through its fingers and then the Golia vanished just as the others had done. The temple was now as silent as a tomb.
Niles and Charlie ran to C
arl and Anya and they assisted them to their feet. Carl was shaken and Anya was mad.
“The Golia are getting too hard to control. I’ve never seen Stanus and the others acting like this. Where are the adults disappearing to and why in the hell are they so filthy?” she asked herself out loud as she walked over and picked up one of the torn ropes and looked it over.
“How is your grandmother?” Niles asked as he finally got his shaking under control.
Anya looked at Compton and then tossed the frayed rope away as she helped Carl over to the dais where he leaned heavily against the stone.
“She will be dead by midnight. She gave her life for Mikla.”
Denise Gilliam walked out of the room and threw herself onto the stone floor and swiped at the sweat on her face and forehead. She was shaking her head. She looked up at Anya.
“She wouldn’t be so weak if we had gotten her to a hospital. Hell, we can still save her if we move now,” she said, pleading with Anya.
“My grandmother has made her choice. She will live until this is settled, and then she will go the way of Kale, of Joshua, and of Moses.”
“I cannot believe you, you are an educated woman. We can save her.”
“No, Doctor, we cannot. This night has been foretold since Joshua. It has been foretold since the time of the Exodus. We either live after tonight, or we go the way the Golia were always meant to go, to extinction. My grandmother’s life will ensure their survival.”
“You are all insane,” Denise said, standing and turning to check on her dying patient. “And you, Director Compton, are guilty of backward thinking just as much as the Jeddah.”
“We don’t have a right to interfere,” Niles started to explain but stopped. He lowered his head. “Tonight the Jeddah pass into history.”
* * *
Stanus allowed its anger to be placated by his claws sinking deeply into the stone wall of the temple as it leaped from the ground to the twenty-foot mark of the wall. It hesitated as its claws sought purchase in the porous rock. Small jets of steam escaped the stone where the deep, purple-hued daggers sank deeply. Stanus thrust forward with its hind legs, clearing the stone by inches as it leaped another thirty feet, and then the long, strong fingers and toes found purchase once again. Then it repeated the climbing maneuver until it sprang onto the gallery shelf where the young Golia crowded around the alpha male, who snapped, slapped, and pushed the smaller wolves away as it went to all fours after landing.
Stanus shook its head as its eyes looked around at the young. Their parents had vanished once more after their initial curiosity over the fate of Mikla had been satisfied. Stanus turned and looked down into the temple and saw the man being helped to the dais by Anya. The wolf was feeling more confused than ever at the appearance of the strangers. For a reason the beast could not fathom the Jeddah queen had taken them in and by the way her thoughts met his told it that she trusted these humans where the Golia feared them. Stanus had been confused by the man that had traveled with it. At first the Golia hated the intrusion of a mind it did not know. Nor could it ever fully understand the dimensions and deepness of the man that had been inside its head. The human was like Stanus himself and that was odd for an outsider. However, he had the feeling that the man and his companions were here to determine the fate of the Golia—and that was not understood. The difference between the spell making with Marko was the fact that although Stanus knew Marko, he never fully trusted the man prince. On a more unstable note to the Golia was the fact that the human tonight eased Stanus to the point where it allowed the traveler to see and feel it. This man was trusted among his own, and the difference between him and Marko was what was confusing Stanus.
The alpha male stood and slowly rose to both feet and then sniffed the air. It stopped and ran until it cleared the young and then went to all fours as it started to run even faster for the very highest point of the temple structure. The many holes that had been dug in the past year were evident throughout the upper reaches. Hundreds of holes the size of small doorways dotted the walls. The darkness in this area was as if bright daylight in the night vision of the Golia. Stanus pushed through one of these and ran down the length of a Golia-dug tunnel.
Stanus traveled the excavation for two miles until it reached a chamber where it opened wide enough for a thousand of the Golia. Stanus broke into the open and ran for a strange-looking object that ran the entire length of the chamber. Several more of the long, rounded objects protruded from the stone. The chamber was five hundred feet high and as many long. It had taken the wolves nearly a full year to reach the spot that Madam Korvesky had put into their minds almost eighteen months before.
Stanus was joined by Mikla. The once injured wolf sniffed Stanus up the length of his brother’s body. Stanus allowed this. Mikla was not much smaller than Stanus but the alpha weighed almost a quarter more than its little sibling. Once the greeting was done, Stanus and Mikla rose to their hind legs and then resumed their digging just as the other Golia adults were doing. Every once in a while growling was heard as the wolves struggled with the pile-driven steel.
The steel-reinforced anchor pins of Dracula’s Castle were now fully exposed and the anchors’ foundations was crumbling far faster than in previous days and months. The strange vibration Sarah was trying desperately to get a handle on was increasing as the enormous anchor pins started to give way.
Castle Dracula was being undermined from the mountain itself by the deteriorating hold that the anchor pins had on the cracked and worn rock it was attached to.
A thousand animals began to dig out from around the massive steel pins in their continued undermining of the engineered foundation.
The new and very much improved Castle Dracula was doomed long before the first guests hit the dance floor.
* * *
Madam Korvesky was lying on the cot after Denise had finished with the procedure. The morphine drip she managed to handle with her minimal equipment made Niles proud of the young MD as she went about the field amputation on the eighty-eight-year-old woman.
“Young miss, I would like to thank you for giving me the extra time I needed.”
Denise Gilliam threw down a bloodstained towel and then braced herself against the old and worn table her instruments had been placed on. She pushed the offending stainless steel utensils off the table where they crashed to the floor and then lowered her head as she cried. Without saying anything the very tired and angry doctor turned and left the enclosure.
Alice, who was sitting next to Madam Korvesky on a small stool, knew they had asked Denise to do too much. Doctors become angry when patients think they know more than they do. And Dr. Gilliam was angry knowing she had just killed an old woman for no other apparent reason than the belief she would save the injured wolf, even after Niles had explained that the strange trade-off had worked as Mikla had bounded away after being on death’s door.
“I must speak with you,” Madam Korvesky said as she raised her head off the makeshift pillow made up of two worn blankets, “and you, Keeper of Secrets,” she said first to Alice and then Niles, who walked over to the small cot.
“I do not expect you to understand the ways of the Jeddah and the Golia. To tell you the truth we have not understood ourselves for so long that we have become lost. Today you will learn the secret of the Jeddah tribe and why we settled here in these mountains and why our mission here thirty-five hundred years ago was one of survival. You will learn of the secret, but you will never leave here with it. It all ends here, tonight. If what I believe is going to happen, indeed comes to pass, this will all be gone by sunup tomorrow. You will take the truth to your place of secrets and there you will have the knowledge that we choose no longer to have.”
“We do not understand,” Alice said as she held the woman’s hand.
Madam Korvesky tried her best to laugh but the constant throb of her missing right foot and ankle kept her from it.
“The treasure of the Exodus will be the reason the Temple of Mos
es will fall by the hand of the unbeliever.”
“If we can get down to the resort we can get the authorities here,” Niles started to say.
Madam Korvesky held a hand up. “Bring in the Man from the Sea,” she asked Niles, who went to the door and vanished momentarily.
Two minutes later a weary Carl Everett stepped into the enclosure where he had been just five hours before. Alice smiled up at the captain and he nodded. Anya stepped in behind him and placed an arm around his waist and helped guide him into the room.
“Who can understand the ways of the ancient world better than the traveler who has experienced it?”
Carl was confused as he looked from the dying woman to her granddaughter.
“You have seen your companions?” she asked in an increasingly weary voice.
“Yes, I think they are being held against their will. I’m sure about that but … but…”
“What is it?” Alice asked when Everett became confused.
“It wasn’t I who sensed that Jack and the others were being held against their will, it was the wolf, Stanus, who knew for a fact they didn’t want to be in that room. He sensed it.” Carl shook his head as he never would be able to figure out the metaphysical properties of just what it was that happened to him that night.
The old Gypsy closed her eyes and everyone thought she had drifted off from the heavy influence of the drugs. Alice was getting ready to tell Anya to run and get Denise when the old woman looked up into the face of Alice Hamilton.
“You miss him?” she asked with a tired voice.
Without even thinking about it Alice knew exactly whom Madam Korvesky was talking about.
“I miss Garrison every minute of every day,” she said as she wiped away a small tear.
“Yes, I know you do. He was a good man. I knew it back in Hong Kong and I know it now. This, and only this, is why you are allowed to know about us, because soon we will not exist as a people any longer. The Jeddah will finally venture forth from this valley and experience the world for the first time.”
Carpathian: An Event Group Thriller (Event Group Thrillers) Page 50